The Zionist platform is known to all: A publicly recognized and legally secured home in Palestine for the Jews. What is the historic meaning of this program? It is to convert an unhistoric people, that is, a people that does not live a historic life, to a normal historic people and to create for it all the factors necessary for a national civilization: a Hebrew administration, a national Hebrew economic life, a Hebrew education, a Hebrew social organization. The Zionist genius realized that there cannot be even national Hebrew culture without a national Hebrew civilization, for the culture of a people is only the roof on the edifice of a national civilization, and woe to the culture which lays its foundation upon personalities and does not draw from the wells of the nation's civilization. At present there are only atoms connected to one another by the ties of national remembrances, spirit, tradition, and poetry. Zionism purports the building out of these atoms, which are scattered throughout the world, of a national organism in the land of the Hebrews. And since every national polity and civilization is secular, with the exception of papal Rome and theocratic Tibet, the function of Zionism is to create those conditions which will again secularize Judaism, and raise it to the pedestal of its ancient glory--to make it a historic force. Goluth means: a scattered existence, and one of misery and affliction. Zionism means: a national historic life. And he who prefers a national life to a miserable existence has no other choice than to join the Zionist ranks. DRIVING FORCES: NATIONAL OR SPIRITUAL? The days of religious wars have gone. The Inquisition is dead and theocracy is dying even at Tibet. The modern man, be he Gentile or Jew, no longer thinks _more theologico_ as in the Middle Ages, but rather _more sociologico_. The time when a given religious dogma, a categorical philosophic principle, or some definite spiritual force was the driving power in history is far gone. Law and order in our political and social life are not derived from books and principles, but from life itself. Any attempt to return to the status quo ante 1789, is an assault on modern civilization, an attempt to re-establish theocracy in its various forms.